9.
*** Jebb, vol.ii.p.

302.
When the earls had left her, she ordered supper to be hastened, that she might have the more leisure after it to finish the few affairs which remained to her in this world, and to prepare for her passage to another.

It was necessary for her, she said, to take some sustenance, lest a failure of her bodily strength should depress her spirits on the morrow, and lest her behavior should thereby betray a weakness unworthy of herself.[*] She supped sparingly, as her manner usually was; and her wonted cheerfulness did not even desert her on this occasion.

She comforted her servants under the affliction which overwhelmed them, and which was too violent for them to conceal it from her.

Turning to Burgoin, her physician, she asked him, whether he did not remark the great and invincible force of truth.